Lucian Freud's Childhood Correspondence and Drawings

This project will explore a distinctly new approach to Lucian Freud, in contrast to current scholarship that focuses on biography or later works (Dawson, 2019; Gayford, 2010; Howgate, 2012). Informed by the methodologies of social relations (Latour, 2005; Vinzent, 2020), my approach seeks to study Freud in relation to wider discourses on artist childhood studies, family migration, and network theory. My intended approach will be an original and productive way of re-examining the literature on child refugees from the Nazi regime, as the combination provides a different approach to the study of child migration that otherwise focuses on the Kindertransport (Hammel, 2012; Nahl, 2019; Vinzent, 2009). The materials available not only offer a unique insight into generational perspectives within exile studies from one family, but also shift the focus within the study of art migration away from an artist's later life. That these early archival materials survived is unique, as artists' early works are often either lost or destroyed during migration.